After the London Olympics: “The Gloves Come Off”

When
I was in London last May, I met people optimistic and pessimistic about the
coming Olympics. I spoke with Tories excited about the coming spectacle and
union leaders concerned that the promises of jobs and development would fall
short. I met right-wing economists railing against the Olympic-sized debt and
Labour party leaders giddy about the tourism and “prestige” the Games would
bring. I met cab drivers enraged about restrictions on their routes and bus
drivers ready to strike they didn’t receive a hefty bonus for the extra demands
of the Olympics (the government caved and paid transit workers to be happy
during the fortnight.)

But
there was one thing everyone agreed about and they used the same phrase
repeatedly: "After the Olympics the gloves will come off." They all
meant that the Olympics were a vacation from political reality. After the Games
were done, a political battle would commence over who would bail the UK out of
a crippling economic crisis. Simon Lee, senior politics lecturer at the
University of Hull, was quoted by Reuters
as saying that the
Olympics did little more than “paper over the fact that we are on the verge of
a depression.”

The
numbers are certainly dire. The economy has been shrinking for nine consecutive
months, even with the added stimulus of pre-Olympic spending. Youth
unemployment is well over 20%. Among all unemployed, almost a third have been
out of work for a year. The plan for correcting this is even more dire, with
Prime Minister David Cameron committed to an agenda of acute austerity.. That
means laying off government employees, including doctors, nurses, and teachers,
and raising taxes on working people, all in the name of paying down their debt.

If
Cameron believes that debt is truly the economy's greatest problem, then the
Olympic hangover, as it did in Greece in 2004, could severely aggravate the
existing crisis. The final price tag of the Games, including massive security
costs, will reach as high as
24 billion pounds, ten times the original rosy projections when they won the bid back in 2005. Back then,
London Mayor Ken Livingstone predicted a tax of £240 per citizen to pay
for the games. Suffice it to say, those costs can safely be adjusted upward.

Debt
is not the only hangover of these Olympics. A treasure trove of new
surveillance equipment has now become a permanent part of the London landscape.
Already the world’s most surveilled metropolis, the city is now, as Stephen
Graham reported in the
Guardian, “wired up with
a new range of scanners, biometric ID cards, number-plate and facial-recognition
CCTV systems, disease tracking systems, new police control centres and
checkpoints. These will intensify the sense of lockdown in a city which is
already a byword across the world for remarkably intensive surveillance.” As
one security official told me when I was in London, “These toys aren’t going
anywhere. What are we going to do? Put them back in the box?”

Then
there are the displacements. In the opening ceremonies, NBC’s Meredith Viera
described East London as a “wasteland” that had been “transformed” by the
Olympics. I actually walked the streets of East London and I wish Ms. Viera has
done the same. Another word for “wasteland” could be “working class community
where people live and raise families”. In addition, if the area has been
“transformed” it’s because hundreds of residents were displaced. They are on
the waiting list for promised new public housing, which, once again, because of
the austerity agenda may never be built. Watch the homelessness statistics in
London spike in the months ahead

All
of these chickens will come home to roost in the aftermath of the games when
austerity explodes out of the starting blocks like a demonic Usain Bolt. The
crisis is real and the only question is who is going to pay to bail out the
country. If it’s the 1%, that will mean nationalization, tax hikes, deficit
spending, and the state pumping money into the economy to avoid a depression.
If it’s the 99%, and that’s already the plan, expect a round of vicious cuts
amidst the Olympic afterglow. The National Health Service, so praised in the
Olympic opening ceremonies, will see a reduction
in staff of 50,000. Tax hikes on
workers will be a reality alongside layoffs. Anger will rise. Then, all of that
surveillance equipment will really come into use.

The gloves will come
off indeed. Let’s see if the workers, immigrants, and everyday people of the UK
can take the punch and return in kind. If not, we’ll always have the
Spice Girls.